The DA used Collar’s story Wednesday to impress upon a gathering of parents at St. Paul’s Episcopal School the need to start a dialogue with their teens about drugs and alcohol to prepare the youngsters for the choices they’ll face. The session was sponsored by the Community of Concern, a local partnership of parents, students and five area schools that works to keep children alcohol and drug free.

“He was in the prime of his life, and he was six weeks into his college career,” said Rich. “For those of y’all who have students that are juniors and seniors and they’re about to go off to college, this is the subject that you need to talk to them about.”

Collar’s story may surprise many people. For starters, he wasn’t the only person that night to take a hit of 25-I, which measured about one-ninth the size of a postage stamp, Rich said. The research drug apparently wasn’t that hard to obtain, either. It was ordered from New Zealand by someone in Birmingham who brought it to Mobile. And it’s not even on the state’s list of controlled substances.

“We’re doing a disservice to our kids if we don’t prepare them and empower them to make smart choices when they’re out there,” said Jean Downing of the Drug Education Council, part of the Community of Concern. The partnership sponsors talks and roundtable discussions to create what Downing called “starting points for conversation back home.”

The Q&A session Wednesday covered topics including underage drinking, designer drugs and the pitfalls of posting from parties on social media.

Other takeaway points from the Q&A session were:

• After alcohol, prescription drugs, such as pain relievers from the family medicine cabinet, are more commonly used than marijuana by those ages 12 to 18.

• A single drink is enough for an underage drinker to reach the legal limit for his or her age group. That’s a blood alcohol concentration of .02 compared with .08 for those 21 and older.

• Fake ID kits, which can be ordered online, can produce felony charges because the state seal is altered in the process.

• Heavy marijuana use can result in a drop in IQ – an average of 8 points – if it is begun at a young age and continued through adulthood, according to the NIH.

• Synthetic marijuana, sometimes called spice, is little more than potpourri treated haphazardly with chemicals, and it can cause seizures and sudden death, Rich said.